The revelations in the report by IG Horowitz released this past Thursday are disturbing on many levels, but one of the deepest and most basic is of the power of institutions such as the FBI if they become corrupted and corrupt.
What used to be reserved for the plot of movies has now been revealed to have actually happened, and the maneuverings easily could have remained secret if just a few circumstances had been otherwise.
Talk about fostering distrust and paranoia!
Here’s just one example:
And from a comment found on my blog:
Comey is strutting around and running his mouth, as if he knows that he will never be prosecuted…This got me thinking, and a horrible thought at that.Could it be that we have all been way too naive and blind to boot, and that all of this “resistance” by apparently every high level official in the alphabet agencies—from both those officials already in place, or starting immediately after their appointment—is a sign that the the coup we feared was taking place today actually took place some time ago and, moreover, that it was successful?That despite the maintenance of the outward forms of our Republican government—now an ossified and dead shell—it is actually the members of the Deep State, working underneath that concealing, protective shell, who are de facto calling the shots and running the country, as they have been doing for quite some time now?
Whether correct or not, that sort of thinking has been fostered by Russiagate, including the documentation in IG Horowitz’s report. While it’s not true that everyone was naive prior to this—some people have been alleging Deep State control of things for a long time, however naive we were, we are all less naive now. When paranoia, right or wrong, seems justified, it doesn’t bode well for the nation.
As with Watergate and Nixon (which pales in comparison with this), the question can and should be asked: “What did Obama know and when did he know it?” But will that question be asked by anyone with the power to answer it?
This is not the first time the American public has seen what appears to be a two-tiered system of justice. Some people are hounded, harassed, and found guilty of infractions that seem minor while others (in particular, Democrats and members of what has come to be known as the Deep State) are winked at when they appear to be committing acts that are far worse. A discerning person, looking at the situation, can’t help but notice it.
And way too many Americans are willing to look the other way if the person committing the infraction is a member of their party and is out to kneecap a member of the opposite party. Rule of law? What’s that?
I do have a caveat, however. The fat lady has not yet sung on James Comey. The IG report that came out Thursday is not in the nature of a final report. It only concerns Comey’s taking and leaking of the memos, and the DOJ declined to prosecute on that issue alone. Some analysts are saying that this was because that was a weaker case compared to other cases that can and will be made later against Comey. So the DOJ’s decision in this more narrow matter doesn’t mean that Comey will not be prosecuted for some other actions of his connected with Russiagate.
That said, I wonder whether Comey will ever be indicted. I tend to doubt it.
I believe that this entire incident has damaged respect for many government institutions. The loss of such respect—and the apparent loss of integrity within these institutions that has caused that loss of respect—is a profound loss to the nation. It leads us further down a dark path towards more and more chaos and a scrambling for power with no objective rules. That is the deeper meaning and the deeper threat behind these events.
[Neo is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at the new neo.]
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